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Impact of cyber
breach on APM Terminals less than feared, says analysis

In the past two
weeks, the maritime industry has been focused on the issue of cyber security,
following the breach at Maersk. While a lot of focus was on Maersk Line, the
terminal operating arm of the Maersk Group, APM Terminals, was also affected by
the incident. In issue 320 of the SeaIntel Sunday Spotlight, was analysed the
impact of the cyber security breach on the vessel handing operations at APM
Terminals. The analysis shows that there was a clear impact in the immediate
short-term, but it was not far outside the normal operational fluctuations. For
the most part, APM Terminals continued vessel handling operations as normal,
albeit at a slower pace for a short number of days.

The analysis focused
only on vessel handling operations, and did not consider any landside
terminal operations, e.g. handling of containers once they are offloaded and
stacked, gate procedures, intermodal operations, truck turn times, landside
congestion, etc. This is likely where APMT and its customers may have felt the
brunt of the impact of this cyber security breach, said a release on the
analysis.

In the days
following the news of the Maersk cyber security breach, there was widespread
speculation on what the impact would be on the operations of APM Terminals,
ranging from deserted terminals and vessels not being handled, to the more
moderate (and experienced) voices reminding that terminal operations for decades
was done largely on "pen and paper".

Some individual
terminals were severely impacted, not least the fully automated Maasvlakte II
terminal in Rotterdam, where vessel operations stopped completely for a full
week, but even in the worst cases, vessels were routed to other terminal
facilities, as was the case in Rotterdam, where the APMT Rotterdam terminal saw
average berth stays more than double for three days.

Despite the heavy
impact on specific, individual terminals, the impact was quite muted when looked
across all 68 APM Terminals facilities, says the CEO of SeaIntel, Mr Alan
Murphy: The number of vessels that called APMT facilities did decrease slightly
following the incident, but it was still within the confines of normal
operational fluctuations. "We saw a 3-hour average increase in the time
spent at berth after the incident, but the increase is not far outside the
normal operational fluctuations, and was back to normal levels within a few
days," Mr Murphy said. The schedule reliability of the vessels that called
at affected APMT berths dipped significantly in the three days following the
incident, dropping from an average of 74 per cent before the incident to around
55 per cent in the days after the incident, but was back to normal levels again
after three days, the release pointed out.